


This place has taken all my self esteem

by BugTongue



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: M/M, Requited Unrequited Love, forcably unrequited bullshit, please let these nerds rest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-20
Updated: 2016-10-20
Packaged: 2018-08-23 12:57:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8328817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BugTongue/pseuds/BugTongue
Summary: Newt's exhausted, Hermann tries to make him get a full night's rest. These two shouldn't be left alone together if they're so adamant about not hooking up.I'm sorry.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This one's for laurenftagn, that wonderful jerk who allows me to be angsty at them at all hours of the day.
> 
> Title is from "Self Esteem" by AJJ, because I have been listening to nothing but folk punk music for weeks.

The lab quickly left newt’s peripheral vision as he focused on not stumbling over his own feet, and failing. Hermann had a hold of the back and front of his shirt and was walking as fast as their combined uncoordinated limbs would allow.

 

“Jesus christ hermann stop, dude, HEY!” Newt struggled with Hermann’s grip and yelped as they swung around a corner.

 

“You need to stop, Newton. You need to stop, you need to sleep, and you need to rest for more than five minutes at a time every time you pass out over your equipment. This is unsustainable-”  
  
“You know what’s fucking unsustainable? Life! On Earth! The planet I’m trying to save right now, just in case that escaped your noti- my room is that way.” He craned his head around to look behind him, holding onto Hermann’s sweater vest now.

 

“I don’t trust you to actually listen to me, you need a _bloody_ babysitter.” That brought Newt’s attention snapping to the room they were actually entering and his face scrunched up incredulously, voice cracking as he responded.

 

“What?! What- dude, no- HEY!”

 

“Lay down Newton lay- _down_.”

 

A hard shove to Newt’s chest kept him planted on his back on the threadbare mattress Hermann had been sleeping on without care for a few years now, and someone else for many more before him.

 

Newt grumbled as he punched Hermann’s pillow into a more comfortable shape and flopped onto his side. “I need a babysitter like I need a fist up my ass, god you’re insufferable.”  
  
“You might be more tolerable with a fist in your rectum, honestly you test my patience so regularly I can’t imagine you getting any worse.” Hermann sat at his desk, removing his glasses and looping the string up over his head to toss them onto the paper-littered surface. Without the glass in the way, Newt could see every line in his face along with the ever deepening bags under his eyes, sallow skin and fairly bloodshot eyes. He was coated in chalk and it seemed to clump up where his skin folded over skin, mixing with the daily sweat.

 

Newt couldn’t possibly look or smell any better. He didn’t feel physically any better than Hermann looked, if anything he felt like he was dying, just a little bit.

 

“That’s not even the most inappropriate thing I’ve gotten you to say to me, dude. Slacker.” His voice didn’t hold the conviction it normally did, not with the way his exhaustion was creeping up to take hold.

 

“Go to sleep, Newton.” Hermann looked away from him to pick up his phone.

 

Silence settled in like dust motes finishing a journey, like a blanket made of cotton swabs. It rung in Newt’s ears and pressed down on him like a palpable force making him feel heavy and unreal. Sleep, then, sleep is what was pulling him under the floorboards. Sleep was making him feel like drowning in wreckage debris and cooling scrap metal, and he shuddered hard to push it away. Note to self: keep eyes off the news for a while, forever maybe.

 

His voice was laughably weak and he failed to form words the first time he spoke up. “Hmnph… Hey. Would, you come to bed too?” He didn’t have it in him to be fully aware of the cement in his gut knowing Hermann would brush him off.

 

But he didn’t brush it off, his eyes slid from the small box of cyan light in his hand over to the reddish dim of Newt in his bed. “Come to…” Hermann pressed his lips thin and closed his eyes for a moment. Newt counted out the seconds to half a minute, and on cue Hermann rose from his chair with a distressing metal creak to cross the room. The bed dipped as he sat and removed his shoes, then dipped further as he lay down. Newt slid a fraction closer due to physics, and only physics, and not some insatiable need to make sure his lab partner was real or if he smelled like black tea or old man sweat.

 

(He smelled more like breathmints and scalp, and Newton could see the way his hair shown grossly in the dim light that he knew would stay on all night.)

 

He fell asleep before he could finish cataloguing any of this data.

 

***

 

The dust wouldn’t settle, it kept filling his lungs like a thick, black smog and blocked his view. Things moved in the particulates and he didn’t know where he was, things seemed to spin until he was scraping his hands and knees on rubble he couldn't feel. Something rose above him blue and inescapable and he jolted hard as it crushed him-

 

He woke up with an elbow digging into his side and cloth (and beneath that, flesh) in his fists, breath coming harsh and cold. The blanket was wound up around one of his legs while his other was hanging off the edge of the bed.

 

“Newton for god’s sake it’s three in the morning, you were asleep for all of four hours.” Hermann peered down at him in consternation as Newt picked the blanket free and threw it over them both.

 

“Yeah, yeah s’good, sorry.” He laid back down and waited for the shivering to stop.

 

***

 

When he woke up next it was to Hermann futzing with his phone until it stopped beeping, honestly who even put an alarm like that on a _phone_? When it was properly silenced he settled onto one arm and rubbed his face, hand sliding down as his gaze shifted to take Newt in.

 

“... Morning.” Newt looked up at him and tried not to thinking about the overheated air in his chest and the way his feet were cold and cramped from where they stuck out from the blanket. He didn’t think about how Hermann still looked tired.

 

“Good morning.” Hermann sighed and let his head thunk against the wall, eyes slipping closed again. Newt reached out slowly until his hand pressed to Hermann’s stomach, to the place where his shirt had ridden up during his sleep, and didn’t remove it when the man’s eyes fluttered open. He pressed his lips together and pushed down with his shoulder until he was propped up close enough to eye-level. The sensation of hot air in his ribcage warped into something much more constricting, even more so when Hermann brought a hand up to run cool fingertips along the line of his jaw.

 

“You haven’t shaved in awhile.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

They lapsed into silence, until Hermann breathed in deeply and his shirt shifted against Newt’s skin. He looked down before letting his hand inch farther up, under the fabric, up along Hermann’s chest until the other closed his eyes and shivered.

 

“Newton.” His voice held a warning but he made no move to pull away, not even to remove his hand from Newt’s face. So, Newt continued, pressing his tongue to the roof of his mouth as his palm glided over gooseflesh and eventually Hermann’s nipple.

 

And then there were warm, dry lips on his own in a rushed motion, the fingertips at his jaw migrating up into his hair and anchoring themselves tight until knuckles grazed his scalp.

 

He shoved hard and untangled his hand from Hermann’s shirt, sitting up and swinging his legs off the bed.

 

“Yeah, so, I think we should get to the lab before anyone wakes up and comes looking for new information.” His breath was shaky as he finished his statement, peering around for his shoes. Or glasses, even.

 

“... Yes, I-” Hermann’s voice did not _crack_ , god, oh god. “I believe you’re right.” He handed Newton his glasses from off the shelf above his head and stood up to pull on his blazer.

  
“I believe you’re right.”


End file.
